Incorporating Connecting Passengers into the Gate Assignment Problem

This paper investigates the Gate Assignment Problem with Connecting Passengers (GAPCP). Unlike traditional models that assign each aircraft to a single gate during its entire turnaround, the proposed approach allows flexible reallocation among contact and remote gates through towing operations. We formulate the problem as an arc-based model within a multi-commodity network flow framework, considering gate preferences, towing operations, and passenger connections. A flexibility cost function based on idle and buffer times is introduced to penalize insufficient separation between consecutive gate uses, thereby improving gate utilization stability. Using real-world data from a major Chinese airport, the computational results demonstrate that the proposed model can produce optimal or near-optimal solutions efficiently.